


Joulupötyä

by dornishsphinx



Category: Persona 5
Genre: Gen, personasecretsanta17
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-25
Updated: 2017-12-25
Packaged: 2019-02-20 00:05:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,888
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13135005
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dornishsphinx/pseuds/dornishsphinx
Summary: After the upsetting events of Christmas morning, Ann drags Yusuke off to her briefly visiting grandmother's small family Christmas dinner, hoping to take both their minds off things, if only for an evening.





	Joulupötyä

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the Persona Secret Santa 2017 over on tumblr, for MoonKissedDreamer! They requested some Ann and Yusuke content, and I've done my best to deliver —Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays!

There’d been something eerie and sad about the atmosphere of Leblanc after everyone had arrived and got the news. Their friend had just gone and—gone and been a colossal moron, that was what, a colossal, heroic, self-sacrificing moron. They’d stayed around for a while, not sure what to do, before they’d all started slowly peeling away from the café in ones and twos.

Ann, for her part, had decided a sugar boost would help the state her head was in—or at least not hurt—and had dragged Yusuke away from his performance art piece of a human somehow managing to wilt like a flower; that was how, after a couple hours of wordless wandering, they’d ended up in this quiet little dessert place in Harajuku just minutes away from closing time.

Yusuke stared at the dessert in front of him, a tall parfait, eyes narrowed. The waitress had brought it over about fifteen minutes ago and he hadn’t broken eye contact with it since.

Ann had been drumming her fingers on the table, hoping his survival instincts would kick in—honestly, you could hear his stomach gurgling a mile away—but as she glanced over at the clock and saw the waitress, now back in casual gear, cheerfully wave at her coworkers and leave, she knew she had to do something.

She coughed, lightly. Yusuke didn’t so much as flinch in her direction. She coughed louder and subtly kneed the underside of the table, making his confection wobble. That certainly got his attention: he grumbled, taking the fork beside him and subtly shifting it back into position, then frowned in consideration and let it slowly sink back into the leaning tower effect.

“Yusuke!” she finally exclaimed, in exasperation, “Will you start eating already?”

“But how to begin,” said Yusuke, “When any part I could take would ruin the whole?”

It wasn’t hard to pinpoint the real source of the frustration in his voice, but Ann deliberately ignored it.

“It’s a parfait, Yusuke. They’re kinda made to be eaten.”

“So, the parfait’s purpose is to be used and destroyed. Such fleeting beauty is—”

“Fleet its beauty faster; we’re holding everyone up! You know this place closes in ten, right?”

Yusuke made a noise of dissatisfaction, but duly stabbed into the parfait and took a chunk out. Mournfully, he stuck in in his mouth.

“So,” said Ann, now that she was satisfied that he wasn’t going to starve to death out of sheer artistic integrity, “Which is it?”

His eyes snapped back up to hers.

“Which is what?”

“I asked you if you had anyone to spend the rest of the day with.”

“No,” he said, “Why do you ask?”   
  
Blunt as ever. Well, that made this easy.

“I was wondering if you wanted to spend it with me.”

Yusuke’s forehead crinkled as his brows shot up in alarm. “I had assumed that Christmas nights were for lovers,” he said, “Am I to assume you are implying a wish to become as such?”

Okay, scratch that easy part.

“No! I’m asking if you want to come have dinner with me and my grandmother. Don’t be getting any ideas, all right?”

“Your grandmother is hosting a Christmas dinner?”

“Technically we’re having leftovers from the real one. She’s come all the way from Finland since… well. I used to go to Shiho’s when my parents were away on business, but I can’t really do that this year, can I?”

Yusuke examined her face before lowering his own gaze. “Experiencing a common holiday from a foreign perspective. I suppose that might be more stimulating than hanging around the tackiness of commercialism—” Yusuke paused and was quiet for a long moment, before he stared her dead in the eye. “Does your family have a presepio?”

“A what now?”

“The birth of the infant Jesus done in miniature.”

“You mean a crèche? Uh, yeah? Mummo always insisted on putting one up every year, so there’s no way she’s not gonna bring one with her—”

Yusuke lit up at that. “I see. I’ve come across quite a few already, of course, but they were all new and mass-produced. I’ve never seen a set with the proper wear and tear of the years, with a history…” His eyes blazed with sudden intensity. “I’d very much like to see it.”

“Is that your way of agreeing?”

***

“Such elegance of design,” Yusuke marvelled, “Entirely stylised, yet unmistakably depicting the same common scene, as shown from St. Peter’s to the common western home.”

“Yusuke,” she hissed.

“Just look at this sheep,” he said, before Ann snatched said livestock away from his appraising fingers.

“Wasn’t your deal a hour ago about not disturbing the whole essence of the thing?”

Yusuke took in a sharp breath as he no doubt realised she was right, but her sense of victory was quickly shattered:

“ _Leave the boy be, Annukka,_ ” Mummo said, “ _It’s nice to see someone appreciating the family heirloom._ ”

“ _Okay, that thing is less than ten years old. I think calling it an heirloom is a little rich, don’t you think?_ ”

Mummo emitted a little “hmph” of derision before ladling a good helping of stew onto Yusuke’s rapidly diminishing plate.

It made sense, in a twisted sort of way, that Mummo would end up doting on Yusuke. She had a fashion designer for a son, so understandably had soft spot for artistic types; and it hadn’t hurt his case in the slightest that he’d almost immediately appraised her merit as a potential art model— really, though, how he had managed to call her grandmother a great beauty with both complete sincerity and complete lack of shame was beyond her. His thin, hungry-looking demeanour had no doubt immediately set off her grandmotherly sensibilities too.

And somehow, their conversation was managing to flow along like a river too, bumpily and unyielding, slowing itself for no language barrier nor any eccentricity. A Christmas miracle in and of itself, though somehow, she mused, chewing her piece of deliciously salty gravlax on rye bread, she was beginning to feel more like an interpreter rather than a full-blown guest at the table.

(It was actually pretty irritating, but they both seemed to be having fun. Besides, she and her Mummo already had their own little weepy heart-to-heart last night — well, weepy by her Mummo’s standards, which involved her eyes gaining a sparkling sheen to them, apologising for not being there to protect her, and going straight to the promise to rip the bastard to shreds when she forced her way into Hell itself.)

“ _Ah, Annukka_ ,” her grandmother said, as if cued in by her thoughts, “ _Tell Yusuke about that time you really believed I single-handedly won the Winter War, hm?_ ”

“ _I was six!_ ”

“ _Is that how you speak to the greatest soldier of the Winter War, Annukka? Shame._ ”

She rolled her eyes.

“ _Translate that, Annukka. Tell him what I said. Or I will bring out that phone of yours myself and do it manually._ ”

“ _Do you even know how to work it?_ ”

Yusuke was looking between them with wide, curious eyes.

“Ugh, just an old family joke! Ahahaha.”

The dinner continued on in this fashion until Yusuke finally looked satisfied, his eyes drooping with feasting tiredness, and her grandmother insisted he stay, convinced he’d blow away in the wind if he left—“in separate rooms,” she’d then insisted, with a glint to her eye, and hadn’t seemed to notice Ann’s protestations that things weren’t like that between them, no way.

Although, just as she herself was heading off to bed, Mummo had touched her shoulder and told her bringing Yusuke along had been a “very kind thing to do,” so maybe she had heard it, after all.

***

“Your grandmother is an interesting woman,” said Yusuke later as they slouched at either end of the long couch, “She has a passionate heart.”

Ann blinked over at him in surprise from her end of the couch. Really? Her grandmother was hardly a national stereotype, or anything, but it usually took a while for people to get to know her past her natural barriers. Maybe it was just talk—but then again this was Yusuke, who never said anything he didn’t mean, not anymore.

“She does,” said Ann. She considered what she said next carefully. “And she is a little… eccentric. I suppose she had to be to invest everything into an industry like fashion.”

Yusuke blinked, sleepily whirling the conversation around: “Thank you for inviting me, Ann.”

She raised her arm up and waved it around like a lazy conductor. “No problem. Mummo always makes so much food; I didn’t want it going to waste.”

“You knew I had nowhere else to go, didn’t you?” said Yusuke.

Ann blinked from half-sleep to full wakefulness; Yusuke craned his neck around at what was almost an unnatural angle.

“That’s the reason you invited me and Haru, before you found out she had that business dinner already. The others have families of their own, more or less, while we both were still struggling to find new ones of our own.”

“You don’t need to make it sound so magnanimous,” said Ann, weakly. Or mention it at all, really, she added, in her head.

Yusuke frowned. “But it was. I very much appreciate it.”

It sometimes made her a little envious, how Yusuke could say the cheesiest things without sounding ridiculous or immediately brushing it off as a joke. Ann was quiet for a long moment, before she sighed, grabbed at the pile of sheets beside her, and tossed a blanket over Yusuke’s head.

“Get some sleep,” she was in the middle of saying, moving to stand up and finally go to bed, when Yusuke interrupted her with the dreaded question:

“What are we going to do about the arrest?”

“How am I supposed to know?” she said, meaning for it to come out angry and becoming horrified upon realising how choked up her voice was.

Beneath the blanket, Yusuke’s voice was remarkably even: “I suppose it’s unfair to ask that. The Phantom Thieves are supposed to decide things as a team.”

“We’re supposed to be disbanded now though, right?” said Ann, “That thing is gone, and so are our Personas.”

“True. But our disbanding—that was before he let us know he was planning on turning himself in,” said Yusuke.

“I—I suppose so,” said Ann.

The silence came back, enveloping them both with thoughts and fears and anxieties.

“We can think about this in the morning. We’ll call a meeting with the others, if nobody else has.”

“Very well,” said Yusuke.

“Oh, and Mummo told me to tell you there’s even more leftovers if you want to hang around ‘til lunchtime tomorrow.”

“Really!” said Yusuke, more of a gasp than a word.

“I wasn’t lying when I said she makes far too much,” said Ann, grin returning, “And there’s only so much of it I can eat before getting sick of it.”

Even in the early morning darkness, she could see Yusuke’s eyes gleam and, even if thoughts of the arrest were still weighing her down like bricks of a falling pyramid or like her own body had when it faded from existence—well. Somehow she still found herself looking forward to seeing Yusuke’s face of delight tomorrow afternoon, at least.


End file.
